Charles Duguid

Charles Duguid, medical practitioner and moderator of the
Presbyterian Church, was born in Glasgow in 1884. He emigrated to
Australia just before the First World War. From the 1930s when he
first met with the Pitjantjatjara people, until the 1970s, Duguid
crusaded tirelessly for the Aboriginal cause. He established a
mission at Ernabella in north-western South Australia where people
were free to practise their culture and where they were taught in
their own language. Both of these approaches were unusually
far-sighted at the time. With his wife Phyllis, he established the
South Australian Aborigines' Advancement League to inform white
Australians of the sufferings of Aboriginal people and engage them
in campaigning for legislative reforms and more intelligent and
humane policies.

Charles led the 1947 campaign against the establishment of a
British-Australian rocket testing program in the Central Australian
Desert. He worked closely with Donald Thomson to inform the public
of the harmful effect that this program would have on those people
still living traditionally. While the testing program went ahead,
the public meetings held to oppose it brought to public attention
both the issue of nuclear testing as well as the conditions of life
for Aboriginal Australians.

In 1958, Duguid hosted the meeting in Adelaide which led to the
formation of the Federal Council for Aboriginal Advancement (FCAA).
He became its first president. While he was in favour of the South
Australian Aborigines Advancement League continuing to affiliate
with FCAA, he was often critical of what he regarded as FCAA's
left-wing leadership.